


Mutiny Below

by Khadgarfield



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Does this count as Breakup Sex?, M/M, References to Fairshaw, Reunion Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:07:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29286519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khadgarfield/pseuds/Khadgarfield
Summary: Flynn Fairwind has seen a ghost three times in his life. But hes only fucked one once.
Relationships: Flynn Fairwind/Tandred Proudmoore
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Mutiny Below

**Author's Note:**

> ALTERNATE TITLE: i cant believe im writing songfics in AD2021
> 
> SO i actually wrote this intending it to be a part of kinktober, but have been so shockingly lazy with editing that im only posting it now. It's a little weak but, if i dont post it its only gonna sit in my folder doing shit all. 
> 
> I hope youre all having a nice week.   
> xoxo  
> your friend garf

Flynn had seen a ghost three times in his life.

The first time, it might have been a side effect of the whiskey. The second time, he had chalked it up to a foggy, frosty night. The third time, however, was far less deniable. It was the kind of experience that prompted a man rethink this incarnation, and reflect on all the moments that had led him to to this point, and this place, in his life.

Flynn had been finishing his rigging when he heard them. He was humming a tune and swinging down the mast, landing with practiced experience on the deck. He did wobble a little though, under the heavy rope slung over one broad shoulder, and although the boat was creaking and the sea was whispering as it often did, his ears pricked at the mention of a name he hadn’t heard for years now. Maybe he was imagining things? Yeah, that had to be it.

Right?

“-out of the fog. Tandred Proudmoore. The Grand Admiral’s youngest boy?”

With a frown edging his lips, Flynn hovered closer to the crew on bunched together on the poop deck, straining his ears to catch the rest of their conversation.

“It can’t be him…” he heard someone say, “the ships were lost!”

“He met with the delegates from the mainland not two days ago. It’s definitely him.”

“Hey! ‘Scuse me.” Flynn startled his gossiping sailors with his interjection, and they immediately took on expressions that said they knew they should be unloading cargo or sweeping the deck. “Quick question. Did I hear you say you were talking about _Tandred Proudmoore_? That he was… Well. y’know. Alive?”

“Yes Captain,” One of the deckhands replied. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” Flynn shot them a tight smile and fumbled to drag the hefty rope off his shoulder. For some reason, his usually skillful fingers felt thick like uncooked blood sausage, and his heart had come to sit at the back of his throat. He pressed the rope into the hands of one of the crew, his legs jelly as he made his way down the gangplank and onto dry land. He knew the _Wind’s Redemption_ was only moored at the other side of the harbor, and it wasn’t so late in the afternoon that the Alliance folk wouldn’t still be milling around. It was a walk that took about five minutes, if he was being leisurely, but today he made it there and stumbled on deck in the space of two minutes. He had broken a sweat, in the clean and clear heat of the springtime sun - he wiped rivulets of it off his face as he made his way across deck to the mission table, where the alliance Spymaster and his colleagues liked to idle their days.

“Master Shaw! Hi! Hello, it’s me again. Sorry to interrupt!”

His heart was racing, pushing thick tides of blood through his body so intensely the might of it echoed in his ears. Mathias Shaw, the lithe and handsome gentleman who headed mainlander intelligence operations, seemed annoyed to be pulled from his conversation with the equally handsome (but far more intimidating) King of the Gilnean people.

“Flynn?” He said, before remembering both himself and Flynn’s station, and correcting himself in the blink of an eye. “Captain Fairwind, should I say. How can we help? Did you run into some trouble on your expedition today?”

“No, of course not. Nothing like that. I came over to ask you about something I overheard. I didn’t believe it, and so I thought I’d be best to check.”

Mathias Shaw blinked at him, deep green eyes trying to gauge his body language, and dissect the torrent of thoughts and emotions churning inside his mind. The Gilnean King, Greymane Flynn was pretty sure his name was, looked on with haughty curiosity. Flynn was aware there was an extremely well-armed Elf standing beside the table as well, watching him fumbling over his words. The way the Kaldorei seemed to meld in and out of sight like that would probably never cease to disturb him.

“Something you overheard?” The Spymaster repeated, arching a single eyebrow in question. Flynn felt himself flush, noting the way Shaw’s lashes fluttered in his direction, but he really was far too occupied by other things to acknowledge that right now. Normally, Shaw’s discreet little tics pleased him greatly – the occasional way he turned his body toward him when they spoke, and the way he tilted his head to bare his neck, betrayed more than just a professional interest in their exchange. Where Flynn often allowed his ego to be bolstered by the positive attention, he found that in this instance, he could not reciprocate.

“Aye Spymaster. I overheard the crew talking about… Tandred Proudmoore?”

Shaw’s eyebrows crept even higher. At his side, King Greymane grunted in affirmation.

“Yes,” he said, in his low, clipped accent. “The Lord Admiral’s kin returned not two days ago. Why do you ask?”

Flynn felt his entire guts lurch like they were trying to depart his body. There was a moment in which he needed to grip the edge of the low table in front of him, disturbing the stack of maps and Azerite dust strewn across it, because the sound of the world around him seemed to double in volume. He was very nearly overwhelmed by the weakness in his knees.

“Captain? Are you okay?”

Shaw, his voice tense with concern, reached out a hand to touch Flynn’s shoulder. Flynn withdrew from him immediately, as though the touch was poisonous.

“I’m fine!” he ejected, from behind a halfhearted grimace. “But I’m afraid I can’t stick around. Things to do and all.”

He turned and wobbled off the boat on flimsy legs, as though he had completely forgotten how to walk like a normal person - he found himself needing to think far too hard about placing one foot carefully in front of the other.

 _The Keep._ He told himself, barely short of panic. _Better check the Keep._

Once again, he made surprisingly good time. The streets and shops of the city blurred past him as he dashed along alleys and avenues and headed toward Upton Borough. He barely even noticed the bustle of people around him, weaving expertly through markets and children and donkeys carting produce from over the ranges in Stormsong Valley. Above the harbor gate, the sun was setting. By the time he approached the steps of Proudmoore Keep he was gasping to swallow huge mouthfuls of thin, wine-coloured air. The smell of the garden carried easily on a gentle breeze, and silhouetted by the orange glow of the evening the keep looked down on him as a haughty lord would look upon a vagrant. Perhaps that was exactly what was going on.

“Guard!” he stumbled up the steps, approaching the front of the Keep and the imposing, heavy doors. “Hey! Look, sorry to be a bother but I really, _really_ need to get into the –“

The guard, dressed in Proudmoore livery and bearing a rather large pike, thrust out an arm and pushed him back. Flynn felt like a fly he was swatting off his breakfast.

“Not a chance, pal. We can’t just let anyone in, you know.”

Flynn laughed, straightening his coat and hair and trying to make himself presentable. He was still clutching for air, and his face was hot with exertion.

“I’m not just anyone,” he said. “I’m a friend of Taelia’s, if y’know her? She will vouch for me, and so will those alliance fellows. The Mainlanders? They know me too.”

The guard fixed him with a steely gaze, borrowing his authority from the bulky building that loomed disapprovingly behind him.

“No,” he said gruffly. “Not a chance. Without ID or a legitimate reason, I cannot let you inside.”

Flynn grit his teeth, tension building in the front of his head as he thought about what he could do about this. This couldn’t be real, could it? Tandred was _dead_. He had to be! So why the fuck would Genn Greymane lie about that? Or his crew, for that matter? And why was it that Flynn was so desperate to check this for himself?

 _Because if it’s not him,_ a voice in the back of his head insisted, _You need to know straight away, and if it’s not him then you won’t need to let yourself be hurt again._

Flynn Fairwind had been through a lot in his life, and he had endured it all with strength he hadn’t even known he had in himself, but losing Tandred Proudmoore once had been the hardest of anything.

He didn’t think he could go through that again.

Driven by desperation, and without properly thinking things through, Flynn tried to bolt for it. He feinted around the guard and managed to get a whole ten meters up the stairs to the door of the Keep before he was tackled. Cursing the guard, the Tidemother, and everything else he could lay his eyes on, Flynn tried his best to escape his bondage and for a moment, it looked like he might have been victorious. Then came another pair of guards running over. Thick hands clasped his shoulders, and his wrists. He was forced back down the stairs with all the delicacy of an ogre tossing a boulder down a mountain. His heart was pounding so hard that he thought it might break out of him, and escape.

“What on Azeroth is going on here?”

A voice interrupted. A low, clear voice. His vowels molded by the elegant tongue of the aristocracy, and Flynn’s whole universe seemed to come to a stop when he heard it. This was the voice of a ghost. The words of a stranger. Yet simultaneously, it was also the speech of a beloved friend.

“Captain Proudmoore! Our apologies, we are just escorting this vagrant off the premises.”

“Loudly, I must say. I heard you from the foyer! What does he want, dare I ask? Is he okay?”

One of the guards tugged on Flynn’s arm, and pushed him forward. He stood there, sweaty and exposed, in the line of sight of the man that stood on the steps.

 _Yes_ , Flynn thought to himself, over the sound of his soft panting. _That’s him. Tides, that is absolutely him._

Or his Ghost at least. Maybe.

The ocean had returned him as it returned all things, older and rougher and worse for wear. By the Tides, though, Flynn would recognize those eyes anywhere. He would recognize that _jawline_ anywhere. He would recognize the way he stood, with his weight carried squarely over narrow hips, anywhere in the whole of Azeroth even if he was stood at the bottom of the ocean and covered in silt, with seaweed and algae roped on his limbs and threaded through fair golden hair.

 _That’s where he’s supposed to be._ Flynn thought in disbelief, _A corpse entombed in a broken ship, moored deep at the bottom of the sea._

The ghost on the steps seemed to recognize him, too.

“Flynn?”

Those intense eyes fixed on his, Tandred gauged the changes that time had wrought in Flynn’s body and his features. Flynn knew without him needing to say it, all the transformations he was likely able to see. Flynn was bigger now, most obviously, fattened on good food and ale. His hair was longer than it had been when they were younger, too. His clothes had changed. In spite of this though, in spite of _everything,_ he could see his wonder reflected in the face of the man he had loved and lost in his waking life, and in his nightmares. Somehow, here he found himself in the presence of a phantom that had haunted him in early hours, and reminded him during his most vulnerable moments of the specter of his own inevitable death.

“… Tandred.”

“I can’t believe… is it really you?”

“Is it?”

Flynn wasn’t sure how to answer.

The guards, noticing that Tandred seemed to recognize him after all, released their grip on his arms. Flynn was free to step closer now, to mount the steps and close the distance of years and mortality that divided them, but instead they both stood where they were just staring. Just reconciling. Just trying to make sense of the terrifying serendipity of those things that spiraled recklessly out of ones own control.

At least, they did stand there, until Flynn decided he was unable to bear the weight of what he was feeling any longer. He turned his back on the Keep, and on Tandred, and walked hurriedly away.

…

Flynn returned to his apartment that evening – an unusual decision, since he usually favoured his cabin on the _Middenwake_. The apartment was cold, and seemed far too large and empty. He could hear the ruckus from the bar downstairs echoing through his flimsy wooden floor, but that was just the problem with keeping hearth in Dampwick – no matter where you laid your head, you were never more than ten feet from a bar.

Tonight, though, this was a blessing. As Flynn fumbled to turn on the oil lamp on his kitchen table, he had already made his way through half a bottle of cheap whisky. The echo of drunken men singing shanties and starting fights made his little studio feel less lonely. By the flickering copper light of an oil lantern, Flynn regarded the space and the objects with filled it. There wasn’t really much in the way of furniture, but there was certainly no shortage of empty bottles.

Flynn sighed, setting the lamp on the hook on the wall by the sink, and proceeded to rummage through his cupboards for something edible. He had a box of saltine crackers, and a jar of unopened peach preserve, and not being a particularly fussy person he proceeded to drop down in the tatty armchair by the fireplace and eat them both at the same time. Each cracker he dunked in jam brought him closer and closer to asking the inevitable question – the one that disturbed him when he was sleeping but he _never_ dared to think about when he was awake.

What was he doing here, still? It had been how many years? Flynn had debts, yes, and he had an impulsive streak the size of the Sound itself, but he could have moved out of this place years ago, if he wanted to. Somewhere nicer. Somewhere closer to Tradewinds Market. Somewhere where he might fall asleep lulled by the gentle murmur of the sea. And yet...

If he left, then who would keep the ghosts of the place company? The ghost of Tandred, longing on the chair Flynn sat in now. The ghost of terrible stews cooked together over an open fire. The ghost of a hand in his, pulling him through the doorway into the bedroom, and a million other versions of a man gone and mourned over again and again until the room seemed to echo with conversations passed and forgotten. The resonance was so loud that he almost didn’t hear the knock on the door.

“Fuck off,” he yelled, not thinking anything of it. Drunken men clambered up the steps to his doorstep sometimes, confused over who they were and where they were going. He expected to hear cursing in response, maybe another harder knock and rattle of the doorhandle. He didn’t expect to hear a voice, the same voice of as the phantoms whispering in his ears. Except this voice was solid. Softer.

_Real._

“Flynn, let me in.”

Flynn stumbled to his feet and moved to the door. He pressed his ear against it, not sure if he had been imagining things because of his mental state, and asked.

“Who is it?”

“Davy Jones. The one and only.”

When he opened the door though, it was Tandred. He stood there calmly in the shadow of the moonlight, and he looked older than Flynn did now, but still beautiful. He had blue green eyes still. Hair like straw. It was beginning to grey a little around the temples, and his beard glinted with filaments of silver.

“Come to take me under the waves?” Flynn asked, his voice hoarse.

“It does get lonely down here, that’s for sure.”

They stood for a moment, regarding each other. And then Tandred spoke with his dead lips.

“Are you going to let me in?”

Flynn stepped aside, and welcomed the ghost over his threshold.

Tandred’s presence filled the space again in a way that was familiar, and surreal. He strode across floorboards that creaked under his weight, satisfied to feel his footfalls against them once more, and lingered in the middle of the room like parchment drifting in the wind. He watched Flynn in silence as he closed the door and slid the bolt, and then he spoke in a way that was soft with sorrow and heavy with longing.

“You’re looking old, Flynnie.”

Flynn remembered how they used to look together, amber and gold, tearing through Boralus drunk on gin and cutting purses from the belts of strangers. Flynn would pinch jewelry, glittering gems and precious metals, while Tandred distracted their targets and then, they would stand upon the harbor gates and fling diamonds and pearls into the sea rippling below. Flynn still dreamed of those days sometimes, of Tandred backlit by the fire of the setting sun. He remembered how sweet Tandred’s lips had tasted as the wind lifted their hair and the vertigo set in, and maybe they would fall and maybe they wouldn’t, and all those precious things sunk into the ocean where ultimately, all things must someday go.

Seeing Tandred now was like diving deep into that water and seeking those long barnacled jewels. They glittered out of reach, just like he did, tempting and hopeless and addictive and Flynn knew in his bones that soon he would need to snatch a breath, and take a moment to let reality set in. When he did that though, he knew he would drown.

“That I do.”

Tandred continued to look at him, his gaze unwavering, and Flynn waited for that dam to break. He waited for the invisible wall between them to fold under the pressure of nights spent staring alone, into the dark.

It was Tandred who broke first. He closed the gap between them in three short strides – an impossibly small amount, given the distance that kept them apart for so long. His lips tasted like something that Flynn had thought he would never have the chance to taste again. He was clean cotton and salt spray, and sand and black tea and cake. His scent like woody shaving soap flooded and choked Flynn’s nose.

Oh, this was a dream. Or a nightmare. Or both, simultaneously. But Flynn knew whatever it was, he _never_ wanted to have to wake up again.

Tandred’s broad hands seemed to remember how to hold him, cradling the small of his back and clutching him close to that hot, hard chest. Flynn was a big man, but somehow Tandred always made him feel like he would fit in the palm of his hand. The cockiness he wore like a shield against the universe melted away like ice in the sun, and likewise the years between them seemed to dissolve to nothing – Flynn was suddenly nineteen again, messed up and vulnerable and reckless and in love, and it was the kind of love that made it easy to stay up all night just so he could watch the sunrise in the morning. Tandred kissed him like he was delicate at first, and then like he was doing it with the intent to form cracks in Flynn’s very soul. They stumbled together, towards the bedroom. Flynn’s guts lurched as they fell, and the mattress moved up to meet their backs where they rolled.

Tandred pushed Flynn’s shirt off his shoulders, and Flynn moved to divest him of his pants. He slid off the bed, melting to the floor, and tugged the legs of his trousers off from around his ankles. Tandred’s legs were strong, laid with fine blonde hairs. His skin tasted milky and slightly sour, clean, but glittering with a thin sweaty veil. Nervousness, perhaps? Or silent terror? Flynn licked warm stripes on the hollows inside his thighs. Beneath his underwear, his cock was hard and thick and pressing. He groaned, pushing his hands into Flynn’s hair, pulling his face between his legs and inviting him to keep going. Flynn owed him, after all. It had been so long.

The palm against Flynn’s scalp was so familiar it made his spine melt – the blissful warmth twisting with gentle desperation. Flynn could still swallow him down like he had done it every day for decades, and Tandred’s hips rocked shamelessly into his mouth.

“ _Tides,_ Flynn you’re still so good at that.”

His head fell back, when Flynn moved his mouth and lapped at his balls. He took the time to reacquaint himself with the sensitive places that Flynn knew would make him beg for more. Flynn’s own cock between his legs was aching, frantic to be touched. He could feel Tandred’s precum smearing against the side of his cheek, and the hands in his hair became rough and urgent.

“You need to stop, Flynn or I’ll cum.”

Flynn stopped, and Tandred’s laugh was flustered. Needy.

“It’s been a while,” he croaked, and Flynn felt his heart turn over.

“No kidding.”

Tandred hauled him up, and kissed his lips. His facial hair was coarse, and Flynn pressed his nails into the sides of his cheeks just to experience the texture again. Tandred always had been mouthy, but Flynn seemed to have forgotten that - the way he spoke next only made the moment feel more surreal, for being too much like it used to be.

“Are you going to fuck yourself on my cock again for me?”

“Fuck. Yes.”

He didn’t recognize his own voice when it came out of him.

Preparing himself, blessedly, wasn’t something he was short of practice with, though being slightly drunk made it harder than usual. Tandred hovered over him, kissing his throat and chest and belly and hips, and against Flynn’s skin he whispered prayers or superstitions – the pacts he made with watery gods, to ensure that he would return here, to his home.

“Did you think of me when you fucked yourself, on the nights since I’ve been gone?”

Flynn said he did, even though he hadn’t for a long time because every time he did it felt like tearing his own heart out of his aching chest. He had done it thinking of the Spymaster lately, besides. Tandred moaned openly as Flynn took him in, holding his pelvis and sinking his fingers into the softness of Flynn’s hips.

“You’ve gained weight,” he grunted, his own body seeming smaller than it used to – not skeletal but certainly slight. “It looks good on you.”

“Be quiet,” Flynn implored, unable to take the sound of his voice, that felt like nails on his bones. It had been a while since he had a real cock in him, not since he had been in Freehold, and he had forgotten how much better it felt than a fake one. Warmer, for one, and slightly pliant. It fitted in his core like it had been made to be there, or maybe that was just Tandred, that felt like that. Flynn pushed the other man backwards, and sat astride his hips. He began to ride him slow and deliberate, pushing his hands through Tandred’s fair hair. Flynn bent at the waist to lean over him to kiss, and when he closed his eyes there was a hideous moment where he thought that any moment now he would wake up sweating, his dick throbbing and wet pressed against his inner thigh. The world seemed to dilate around him, his heart clenched like a fist on a silver doubloon. How was it going to feel to wake up from this, his heart bleeding inside his chest, from a wound he had thought healed long ago?

Tandred must have noticed his hesitation. A questioning hand patted the side of Flynn’s ass, and the way he was looking at him, even from this close, was so full of adoration and relief and want that Flynn couldn’t hold himself together anymore. He broke into a shuddering, gasping sob. His grip on Tandred’s shoulders became vice-like, as though he wanted to say without words that he would never, ever, _ever_ let him go again. Yet even as they held each other, and Flynn acclimatized to the sense of being whole again, he knew that in the morning they would have to talk about how they couldn’t do this anymore.

Things had changed for him, now. For both of them.

Tandred held his face, and kissed him deeply through the tears. Flynn let himself rock tentatively against his pelvis again.

 _I’ve got you_ He thought intensely. _I’ve got you, and I love you, now just the same as I always, always did._

Flynn kissed him back in desperation, as though feeling water rush into his throat and chest, while knowing the last air in the world is at the bottom of Tandred’s lungs. He tasted the man’s death rattle, and it was briny and cold, and his skin felt chilled like a corpse even though somehow, he was burning, too. Flynn rolled sideways, pulling Tandred with him, inviting him to fuck him hard and rough and reckless so Flynn could draw his very last. His body felt sweeter and heavier inside him, for knowing the one thing he didn’t know last time – but who could blame themselves for not knowing that the last time was the last time? Flynn could feel it, even as that cock hit his prostate made his back arc and his entire body ripple with pleasure, that he would never be able to lie with Tandred Proudmoore again.

Tandred finished quickly, flooding him hotly and moaning his name like a breathless, hopeless prayer. Flynn managed to cum for him too, though the end twisted with grief, and as he came down again Flynn found himself laying there and mourning the loss like a child crying against its mother’s breast.

And Tandred, his dear Tandred, who was a ghost and a lover a sailor lost at sea, cried too. 


End file.
